Foreigner's God
by Kaniehtiio
Summary: She knows. When she wakes, her world will stop and hurl her off its muddy depths and cast her into space. A short drabble about Vince Rumancek's death.


She knows.

There's nothing that spells disaster faster than a thing her mind has spun in the night. It comes faster than a train, this dream of sorts, but she knows it's not a dream at all and that it is her Third Eye that she's dreaming with and that she had better pay attention to the signs and flashes in her mind or else the world will fall to shit before her very eyes.

The world will fall to shit for her if she does not heed the warnings that come to her on occasion in the middle of the night. She'd learned that the hard way in her adolescence, before she'd known to pay attention and that the dreams were so important to her life and to the lives of anyone that's connected to her.

She knows.

The dream isn't clear - the visions are never clear for her. They come in the flashes of light and fragments of scenery that she can only hopelessly describe as the perfect recipe for disaster. She focuses, and she can feel in the pit of her stomach that whatever is going to happen had better be heeded with a heavy heart, because a Rumancek always knows when the wild spirit of nature arrives, and the wild spirit of nature in the veins of man is lethal and fatal and works quickly. It never leaves a trace and yet it can take him so cleanly and so quickly.

She knows.

His name is Vince Rumancek and he does not disturb her sleep when he leaves the trailer. There's a bottle in his hand. It's a common sight for the both of them now. What comfort he finds comes from the bottle. His little girl - not so little now, approaching 26 in all her brown-skinned Rumancek glory - takes some place in that comfort, but his true solace is the fire that scorches his throat and muddles his mind and allows him to forget and enjoy for just a little while longer.

He'll take the bottle. Then he'll take another. Then he'll take a third, and a fourth. He'll laugh with the devil and trace the stars upon the earth in ignorant bliss. But he never disturbs his little girl because he promises to return when the night is over with his eight bottles and poisoned body.

She knows.

When she wakes, the world will be no different. The world will continue to spin. It will march to its own beat and continue on through tragedy and aching. It will absorb happiness and heartache and hunger from its roots and replenish the story with a vigor that continues on because the world stops for no one.

She knows.

When she wakes, _her_ world will stop and hurl her off its muddy depths and cast her into space because it was she, Destiny Rumancek, who had the power to stop him and she, Destiny Rumancek, who had not acted when the time was prime.

And it is she, Destiny Rumancek, who walks from her room to find her father. Her expression is absent and faithless and tired mixed in such a fashion to suggest what little desire she has for anything in this world.

She knows.

Not two steps are taken from the trailer before she sees him. There is no reaction from the woman because there is no hope for the hopeless. Even her foresight had given her no time to stop what was happening but she knows that she very well could have years ago when she had first smelled the alcohol on his breath when his downward descent began.

Down, down, down the Rabbit Hole…

She knows.

When she wakes, the world will be no different. No lives will run to her in a desperate plea so she will keep her soul locked in a safe place to return the empty gesture. Nobody but those her father helped will notice his passing and they will not mourn his passing and that's all for the better because she does not want them to see the weak tears of love that flow so freely from her eyes and laugh at her in her privacy. Her blood is strong but there comes a time when every creature on the earth comes to accept that a part of their essence is missing from their character and that they will never get it back.

She knows.

When she moves her belongings, she calls those closest to him because the trailer of a dead man should never stay empty for too many days in a row. His family can live while she stays in the town because where else is she to go without the others to latch onto? She needs the physical contact but wants nobody to break through her mind because her mind is weak and she must push past his death.

So she casts on a strong smile and moves on, because when she wakes, the world will be no different.


End file.
